Seriously Impressive Ways To Start A Conversation In Mandarin

If you’re new to our channel, we are Luke Neale and Phil Crimmins, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Mandarin Blueprint. Our company is focused on one mission: To make learning Chinese simple and rewarding. We do this by creating ground-breaking courses, services, and community for Mandarin learners like you.

How we got here:

2013:
We both started learning Chinese in Chengdu, Sichuan province (China). Phil got a degree in Chinese from Sichuan University. Luke went the self-study route.
We both struggled a lot for the first year, wasting thousands of hours and thousands of dollars getting nowhere.
2014:
We both almost quit, until we discovered the magic of ‘comprehensible input’. We used proven memory techniques to achieve advanced literacy in a few months, and began immersing in Chinese TV, movies, books, comics, and podcasts.
2015:
Within a year, we went from failures, to passing the highest level Chinese exam at the time (the HSK 6), and achieved B2 spoken fluency. We did this learning part time, while it should take a FULL TIME learner at least twice as long (that works out to at least 4x faster).
We became tired of everyone we knew falling into the same traps we did, struggling needlessly. We decided to share what we knew with the local community in Chengdu.
2016-2018:
We started Mandarin Blueprint. We spent 100s of hours teaching what we knew in live and online seminars, gradually developing our own curriculum.
2019-2024: We officially launched our online video curriculum, and continually improved and perfected the content, community, and various supplementary courses.
TODAY: Our paid membership Mandarin Blueprint Pro is taking the Mandarin-learning world by storm, making Chinese simple and rewarding for thousands of learners.

To our fellow Mandarin enthusiasts! Whether you’re learning this language to...

Connect more with a friend or family member,
Improve your career prospects,
Travel the world,
Massively raise your status as a human being
OR purely for fun, the challenge, or sheer love of the process…

…you are on a highly worthwhile mission. Chinese is NOT “hard”. It is MADE hard by methods that SUCK.

Our method does NOT suck.

(We’ll get back to you within a few hours)

保重 (take care)
Luke & Phil

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro & Cultural Differences
1:25 Just Passing By
6:45 Stopping to Talk
9:45 Most Common Conversation Starters
11:50 Fixed Phrases
12:50 Common Responses to Greetings

[LordRubino]

I love your happy face, smiling mood and amazing voice. Really fantastic! I've been mimicking female voices and sometimes i find it difficult to find my natural tone. With you is so much easier. (even if your voice is amazingly deep <3) Thank you for all this videos. Very educational.

[OstiOriginals]

THIS CHANNEL IS ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE EVER FOUND FOR LEARNING CHINESE, IT IS VERY INSPIRING AND I SEE YOU GUYS GROWING VERY BIG!!!
你们真的是最棒的!!!

[joemanner]

You sir are a godsend. For somebody who's trying to learn true conversational mandarin, It's so refreshing for me to learn from somebody with actual first hand experience living in China. Your videos are amazing.

[thomaskorell]

Thank you for the heads up according to the cultural do's and don' do's. This is very helpful!
I've been in Pakistan this year and have been warned in advance too about what is a no go (handshakes with women or wearing short clothes). This is always nicer than learning it the hard way through sceptic looks or comments. 😅

[mariofiorilli]

Very enjoyable, excellent content, lots of new stuff to master. Ty!

[Tired_mnkey]

1:46 I know this sentence! What surprised me is that the lady cut the什么 into sounding like 什 and using the 么 as a jump into the 名字 (yes I needed to point that out)

[audreyeugenee]

This is one of the best Chinese learning channels and I’m so grateful to find it at the perfect time. Thank you so much!! 🎉

[thebornking]

Great content please be a little clearer sometimes with which phrase you show us in clips means which, i got a little confused 😅 thankyouu

[LucasRcarman]

I just started learning Chinese and this makes Chinese alot more understandable

[thealgernon]

Just discovered your videos. Exactly what I need. Perfect. :) 谢谢

[deyongutube]

Your Mandarin is so good. How long did it take you to reach this level?

[patriot]

Thank you for your hard work, as a Chinese teacher myself, this video was so interesting and helpful, giving me new and fresh ideas. Keep up the good work :) 😀🙏

[wealthynomad]

These are great. I haven't gotten to immersion yet but one thing that concerns me is hearing the various clips in this video. I don't know if it's their rate of speech, but the Chinese speakers seem to drop syllables a lot or they combine words. (I know, English speakers do the same).

I understand that's just speaking naturally, just wondering about immersion. Thinking I don't know a word that maybe I do, but the speaker said it so quickly or in an odd way.

[yanndroy]

I love your videos and I am improving a lot, but please please keep the sentences in Mandarin longer on the screen so we can write them down, even pressing pause is a challenge sometimes I press it and the sentence is already gone xD

[arisaka]

awesome video!, crucial to understanding the social norms of quick chinese conversation, i will be saving this

[taehyungkim-]

What a great channel. I like the video and I already subscribe this channel ▶️ 👍👍

[tarochilo]

Thanks for this awesome video!!
I am looking for 中文电影. The ones you have used in this video look nice could you kindly share their names.
感谢您．

[SnakeAndTurtleQigong]

I live in a Daoist monastery in the states, and had a visitor from China greet me with “howdy!”
😂 🤠

[emmaking]

Hi there! I love your videos! I was just wondering if all your youtube videos are from your course? Just wondering if I needed to watch your videos prior to buying your course or they are integrated in the course :)

[yousefwaleed]

Great content by the way... Thanks for it
Your video about pronunciation are very will and soild in concept and knowledge ❤
.
And also i want to know where did you get the chinese subtitled videos you used in this video